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DELIVERED BY THE PASTOR, 



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IN THE 



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WASHINGTON, D. C. 



SABBATH MORNING, JULY 26, 1885. 



washington; 
Lambert & Pigott, Printers, 

Nurris Building, 501 F Street. 

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DELIVERED BY THE PASTOB, 



'Rey. pi\. BYi\ON Sunderland, 



WASHINOTON, D. C. 
SABBATH MORNING, JULY 26, 1885. 






washinc7ton : 
Lambert & Pigott, Printers, 

Norris Building, 501 F Street, 

1885. 



Note. — This simple discourse, the humble tribute of one 
whose ministrations the illustrious General, mourned to-day 
throughout the civilized world, at one time attended — was pre- 
pared in a round of daily duties, and delivered on this first 
opportunity occuring after the decease. 

It is now published by the kindness of the author's generous 
friend, Mr. James L. Norris, whose ever noble nature responds 
to the universal sentiment of grief which fills the Nation, and 
whose willing hand offers to the disconsolate family this expres- 
sion of heartfelt sympathy. 

B. Sunderland. 



ve7 



THE DEATH OF GRANT, 



Mt. McGregor, July 23, 1885. Morning, 8:8. 



Second Chron., 35, 24. * * * And all Judah and Jericsalem 
mourned for Josiah. 



This man was one of the best of the kings of Judah. At 
his death there was lamentation in all the land. Thousands of 
years pass away, and far off from the scene of that ancient 
mourning, a powerful people in their magnificent home under 
the setting sun are cast down by the death of their great coun- 
tryman. 

The thought which fills all hearts at this moment is — General 
Grant is no more. 

He once sat with us in these seats. At the time the canvass 
for his Presidency was going on, he, with his now stricken 
family, was a regular attendant upon our Sabbath services, and 
joined in the worship offered at this altar. None who saw him 
as he was with us then can ever forget the devout attention of 
his grave and thoughtful manner. We cannot pass over it to- 
day in silence. 



4 A MEMORIAL SERMON ON THE 

When the Princess Charlotte, daughter of George IV, of Eng- 
land, died, the impassioned funeral preacher, at the beginning 
of his discourse, exclaimed: " God only is great." 

And so now, amid the universal gloom of the Nation and the 
civilized world, we lie prone in our sorrow, and are forced to 
cry out, "God only is great!" 

When we recall the words of Prospero — 

" These our actors, as 1 foretold you, were all spirits, 
And are melted into air — into thin air, — 
And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples — the great globe itself; 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. 
And like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep !" — 

We must cry out again, "God only is great!" 

Yet the man we mourn to-day is one of the few, that touch all 
the higher chords of human nature ; whose departure makes the 
heart sad in every quarter of the globe — 

"One of the few, the immortal names, 
^ That were not born to die !" 

No wonder that while awaiting, the final obsequies the great 
cities of the land should contend for his place of sepulture. 

Henry Melville said : " It is not a Christian thing to mani- 
fest indifference as to where our bodies shall be laid. I would 
be chimed to my rest by my own village-bell, and have my 
requiem sung where I was baptized into Christ," 

Long before, the dying request of the patriarch, far off in the 
land of strangers, gave expression to this sentiment in words 
so simple and so touching that we never can read them but with 
deepest emotion — 

" Bury me in the cave of Machpelah before Mamre in 



DEATH OF GENERAL U. S. GRANT. 5 

Hebron ; there they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife ; 
there they buried Isaac and Rebecca, his wife ; and there I 
buried Leah ! " 

But where shall be the machpelah of the man whose family 
is our Nation and whose home is the whole land which gave him 
birth? To us it seems most fitting that he should slumber here 
amid the people who knew him best — under the shadow of the 
Nation's proudest monuments — in the very capital which he did 
so much to prosper and adorn. 

Contention for the honor of the birth-place or the sepulchre 
of a man who has been foremost in affecting the fortunes of 
mankind has been a feature of human, and, may we not add, 
of laudable ambition, form the earliest times. Seven cities 
claimed the birth-place of Homer. Seven competitors raised 
tombs above the bones of Gautama. 

The great but sad Napoleon, like a caged eagle, dying in his 
far off island prison, made this pathetic request : " Let my 
ashes be interred on the banks of the Seine ; let my dust repose 
among the people I loved so well ! " On the 8th of May, 182 1, 
his remains were buried under some weeping willows near a 
fountain in Slane's valley. Twenty years afterward they were 
borne to France where they now repose beneath a magnifi- 
cent monument in X\-\p7^' ffptel des Invalides." But neither 
Josephine nor Maria Thofc a a is lying by his side. It will not_ 
be so with our great General. He has made sure that she, who 
has been so lovely to him in their life, shall not be divided from 
him in their death. 

This is no time nor place, and I am not the man to attempt 
to discuss the life and influence, or even to tell the story of the 
hero who lies so pulseless to-day in the shadowed and sacred 
cottage on Mt, McGregor — 

" He sleeps his last sleep, 
He has fought his last battle, 
No sound shall awake him to glory again." 



6 A MEMORIAL SEKMON ON THE 

But there is one comfort in the thought that he, a soldier, the 
head of great armies, exposed so often to the death-storm, 
which swept away from his side so many of his comrades, was 
permitted, like Washington, to die in his own bed surrounded 
by his wife and children, his physicians and his pastor. Alex- 
ander died in old Babylon amid the fogs of the marshes and 
the scenes of revelry and debauch which hastened his dissolu- 
tion. Caesar fell in the Roman state-house, at the foot of 
Pompey's pillar — stabbed to death by the bloody hands of 
Brutus and his associates. Marlborough died at Windsor 
Lodge, smitten of palsy. Wellington died of apoplexy at 
Walmer Castle. Lincoln and Garfield were sped to death by 
the assassin's bullet in our own gracious city — but Grant lies 
down to the dreamless sleep, after long, patient, heroic, Christain 
suffering indeed, amid all the touching endearments of family 
and fond friends in that mountain cottage, in the pure and 
peaceful air of almost virgin Nature, in a region of the Empire 
State full of historic interest, near by the famous waters of Sara- 
toga ; that rnountain cottage which henceforth shall become the 
sacred shrine of the Nation's proud but weeping memories. 

Was General Grant a Christian believer? Did he trust in 
Christ as his own and only Saviour and Redeemer ? On these 
questions many hearts will ponder with deep and unfeigned in- 
terest. In these Christian times the apotheosis of a great man 
is far different from that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It 
is fitting to pay respect and veneration to the memory of the 
illustrious deeds of the Patriot, the Philanthropist, and the 
Benefactor ; but no real Christian can forget that the noblest 
and the grandest of the human race belong to a fallen and sin- 
ful order, and, like the humblest and most erring of the sons of 
men, have need of that salvation which is provided only in the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I think that General Grant was impressed with a profound 



DEATH OK GENERAL U. S. GRANT. 7 

conviction of this momentous doctrine. But he w^s "a silent 
man" — a man of deeds rather than of words. There was, 
moreover, an inner temple of his mind where his most sacred 
thoughts of God and eternal things were kept from curious 
public observation. During his residence in this city he was 
deeply interested, both as an auditor and as an officer, in the 
affairs of the churches he attended. He was an earnest listener 
to the doctrines and duties of a Christian life while he occupied 
a seat in our Sanctuary, and when he left us for his own Church 
he was made a trustee of the new and active Organization, and 
there, in the noble edifice near by us, for eight years he was 
found among the most regular and earnest attendants. In all 
his private conversation he was singularly free from unbecoming 
language. In all his public utterances he recognized and ex- 
pressed his deep conviction of the overruling Providence of 
God, and his profound reverence for the Christian religion. 

During his residence in New York he carried out the same 
devotioi, and in the last long, painful illness he had with him 
by his very bed-side his intimate, trusted, and honored pastor, 
who, as I am inform.ed and believe, at the request of General 
Grant led their daily family devotions. What more may have 
passed between them, which would indicate what we all desire 
so much to know, remains to be told by him, who has been 
intrusted by the illustrious dead to bear his religious testimony 
to the world. 

And on this topic— at a most solemn moment in the expe- 
rience of the Nation — I will not forbear to avow what I have 
many times repeated on other occasions, namely, that no more 
essential or important duty belongs to our public men than 
making a public profession of their Christian faith through the 
solemn ordinances of the Christian Church. The value of such 
testimony, given in such a manner, to the cotemporary and 
coming generations is simply priceless. If men believe in 



8 A MEMORIAL SERMON ON THE 

Christ let them have the candor and courage to confess it, and 
that in the most solemn forms which the rites of the Christian 
Church impose. It is not good to postpone this profession, 
against all the chances of sudden death ; for while a man may 
count on the Divine compassion to the last moment, he ought 
not to hazard the opportunity of leaving behind him the most 
positive evidence he can ever give of his peace with God through 
faith in Jesus Christ our Lord. That General Grant had this 
peace and this faith in his final days we all expect to hear. 

The circumstances of his illness and death in this respect are 
widely different from those which arose around the dying couch 
of his great predecessor in the Presidential office, Abraham 
Lincoln, who was smitten senseless in an instant ; and of his 
successor, President Garfield, who was three months dying, 
without any known or reported conversation with any minister 
of the gospel save that which transpired at the depot where he 
was stricken down. There are some strange, unwritten inci- 
dents in both these cases which cast a thrilling light upon the 
dealings of the Almighty with those whom He has lifted into 
positions of vast honor, power, and responsibility ! 

There is another thing which comes home to us in connection 
with the death of General Grant, and to which as a people we 
have not been heretofore altogether strangers — I mean the 
universal outburst of all the most sacred sympathies of which 
humanity is susceptible. There have been times in our national 
history when party bitterness and unseemly feuds have deeply 
prejudiced the fair fame of the Republic. There are wounds 
and rents in the hearts of the people which it seems there are 
no needles of Providence to knit up again like that of a com- 
mon sorrow. In the past, on two eminent occasions, this needle 
of national grief has knit together the ravelled robe of our 
national unity, and made it stronger than ever. There has now 
come another, to show us what we are frequently apt to forget, 



I 



DEATH OF GENERAL U. S. GRANT. 9 

that we are all Americans. The personal and family adversities of 
the last year or two, the painful illness borne so bravely, are not 
without meaning to the thoughtful student of Providence. The 
work of his life was ended ; it was time for him to die. While 
a revolution of popular sentiment had clothed a new man with the 
vast power of the Government which once his hand had wielded, 
there is no more pathetic thing in these recent months and days 
than the last act of the expiring Congress and the first act of 
the new Chief Magistrate in restoring the dying General to 
his place on the roll of martial honor — and this to be followed 
so swiftly by those fitting and tender words which went forth 
from the Executive Mansion but the other day to the widowed 
heart of her who sits in her desolation receiving with her 
fatherless children the great volume of condolence which surges 
around her from every quarter. This private message, this 
public proclamation of the President, will be embalmed in the 
menjory of men, and go down to posterity with the name of the 
great General whose demise has called it forth. It is the voice 
of the Nation itself, so touching and so tender, which shows for 
ail time and to all people the reality of our fraternity and the 
value of our common heritage ! 

General Grant was permitted before his eyes were closed in 
death, like Moses overlooking the land of promise, to see for 
himself the returning tide of national good-will and growing 
confidence. His grand heart had longed for Peace, and he saw 
her coming truly in her beauty and her might. The asperities 
of the past were vanishing away. The hostilities that kept men 
apart were yielding to the gentle but most potent influences of 
a day of better feeling. Towards himself and his dear ones he 
felt the grateful sympathy of the whole Nation beating with the 
spirit of loving veneration. On all this fair vision, on all this 
new outbreak of appreciation which stirred even his own pulses 



lO A MEMORIAL SERMON CN THE 

with a vigor which, alas! has proved so brief, he was privileged 
to look with a calm satisfaction. 

The day of his death calls forth a Nation's grief. It is one 
lamentation without a discordant tone. Human imperfections 
are all forgotten. The mistakes, the errors, the follies of a life- 
time sink into oblivion before the sublime and awe-inspiring 
anthem of a proud people's sorrow — before the matchless death- 
march of a mighty Nation bearing him to his grave ! 

The great lesson of this far-reaching event is that which the 
pen of inspiration wrote out for all the world to read and 
ponder, thousands of years ago — " It is better to go to the 
house of mourning than to the house of feasting. " 

The words which concluded Lincoln's first inaugural address, 
come back to us to-day with chastening, melting, unifying 
energy. 

" The mystic cords of memory," he said, "stretching from 
every battle -field and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus 
of the Union, when again touched, as they surely will be, by 
the better angels of our nature ! " 

How prophetic to-day sounds this sentence which he him- 
self and thousands of others sealed with their blood ? Already 
the swift speeding years have told off to the Nation the mighty 
roster of the illustrious dead. How many times have the cities 
been covered with the dark emblems of mourning? How 
many times has the air been laden with voices of grief in the 
people's recurring lamentation ? The mourning of Judah and 
Jerusalem is dwarfed beside the sorrow which has come to the 
Republic over the burial of her great actors and her noble sons, 
while out of the dust and dissolution, out of the tears and heart- 
aches of weeping mothers and disconsolate children have sprung 
up those sublime sympathies which give in the North, in the 



A MEMORIAL SERMON ON THE DEATH OF GEN. U. S. GRANT. II 

South, in East and West new coherence and ornament to society 
and civilization ! 

Ah, how true it is, that beneath the shadows of the sepulchre 
the nation's heart is purified, and graces come into our private 
and public life, which light it up with an immortal beauty, and 
fill it with a radiance descended from the skies. So the pilgrim 
angel of human Grief treads silently in human habitations, and 
makes every heart sacred which the finger of God has touched. 
Oh, pilgrim angel of human Grief, white-haired and bent with 
the long travel of the ages, thou hast kindled new hope in the 
breast of patriarchs and prophets, priests and kings : thou hast 
softened the harshness of human nature ; thou hast trodden 
over all the hills of Time, and where the desert wastes looked 
dreary thou hast blown the blossom and infloresence of a fairer 
vision and a grander life ! 

Out of this mighty touch of the grief we feel to-day may the 
flower and fruitage of faith in God, of trust in Christ, of grace 
by the Holy Ghost, of fellowship with man, of noble purpose 
and aspiring aim, come forth abundantly to bless our country 
and the world ! — Amen. 



— '^hSh — 



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